Phlogiston

Phlogiston generates reports from Phabricator data, inspired by Scrum Burnup charts. "The name comes from the Ancient Greek φλογιστόν phlogistón (burning up)" and is pronounced "FLOWJ", not "FLOG".

  • Phlogiston reports show the size of project backlogs, the amount of work completed, and historical trends.
  • Phlogiston can forecast completion dates, and identify projects that are unlikely ever to finish.
    • Forecasts attempt to indicate their own (un)reliability.
  • Reports can divide appropriately tagged Phabricator tasks into different categories and report by category.
  • Phlogiston reports supplement your narrative about your team's work and progress, and can help identify cognitive biases that distort narratives.
    • Phlogiston reports are a complement, not a replacement, for in-depth understanding of backlogs, tasks, and context.
A chart with X as weeks and Y as points of work, showing the total amount of work over time as a solid gray area rising over time, and the amount completed as a black line.
An example of a Phabricator burnup chart, with forecasts.

For WMF Phlogiston reporting, see

Phlogiston is currently in Maintenance mode; a number of existing users are supported, critical bug fixes are addressed; new features and new users are considered but resources are very limited. See Roadmap for more information.

Questions Phlogiston can help to answer edit

Phlogiston reports are designed to help answer the following questions:

  • What can we complete in the current time period?
  • How much work remains until we reach a goal?
    • How long will that take?
  • How has the scope of a goal changed since we started?
  • What have we been working on?
    • How much of our recent work has not been high-priority work?
    • How much has not been relevant to quarterly goals?
  • What bottlenecks exist in our work processes?

Caveat: Phlogiston is strictly limited by the quality of data available in Phabricator, and on the presence of well-defined categories of work. The effort required to generate sufficiently detailed data in Phabricator may exceed the value of the reports.

Existing notes: Phlogiston reports by question.

All Phlogiston reports are provided in two forms: one based on Points and one based on Count of tasks. Teams using Points should consider both reports in combination; teams not using points can disable points reports. This section explains what all of the reports show, how to interpret them, and what various patterns of real-life development look like in Phlogiston.

Configuring Reports edit

Installation and Operation edit

Design edit

Links edit